Sunday, February 10, 2013

Violence against women

"We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this earth, though it's almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender." [A rape a minute, a thousand corpses a year].

From the above author: "Rape and other acts of violence, up to and including murder, as well as threats of violence, constitute the barrage some men lay down as they attempt to control some women, and fear of that violence limits most women in ways they've gotten so used to they hardly notice - and we hardly address."

A rape a minute, a thousand corpses a year is an excellent article. It is well written and covers the broad range of violence where women are the primary victim, rape is just one. E.g., domestic violence is predominantly male on female violence.

Even a brief search of the Net demonstrates that there seems to be a need by men to exercise control over women and is manifested in some men by violence through rape and beatings. While there are women who rape and beat, they are in a very narrow minority.

It seems clear though that it isn't the sex that is important to the rapist - it is the 'need' to exercise control over another, and that is easiest to exercise when the victim is vulnerable. However, not all men are violent rapists, but being male is a risk factor.

But to acknowledge the male gender risk factor fails to address the why. Are there just some men that cannot control themselves? Is it genetic? Or is it cultural depravity that seeks to excuse men by blaming the victim.

The Times of India had this story Why Indian men rape. ". . . the truth is that at the root of it all lies a culture built around hierarchies, of gender, faith, colour, caste, region." It is "[a] mindset that since the time of that deviant philosopher called Manu has refused to see “the weaker sex” as anything but property and the receptacle of male sperms."

Take a peek at this List of Rape Myths. It is incomprehensible that any of these myths would find support among the reasonable and rational thinking. It seems to be part of the cultural deviance that rather than hold individuals liable for their failure to exercise self-control to make them a victim.

The Glory of Being Female is another well written article exposing our culture, and others for that matter, where men have an insatiable, albeit non-violent, need to control women - it almost seems global. The author rightfully states: "Has there ever been a more contentious battlefield than the female body? Everybody wants a piece of it."

It is more than difficult to comprehend the superiority that men (but not all) exhibit when it comes to women. Why is it that women are placed and held in such a low status essentially because of gender? It isn't based upon fact. Women can and have so demonstrated that they can equally perform any job that a man does. "I am superior if for no other reason than I am a male," just how ridiculous is that?

Are the Condoleezza Rices, Hillary Clintons, and Madeleine Albrights of the world aberrations? Can anyone rationally argue that women's only place in the world is in the home? Is it a viable argument that women are inferior merely because of gender?